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Intel Launches Next-Gen Atom N450 Processor

Posted by Soulskill on from the should-have-called-it-an-isotope dept.

MojoKid writes "Intel has unveiled its next-generation Atom N450 processor, and a review of the new Asus Eee PC 1005PE netbook that houses it shows decent gains in performance and lower power consumption. The Atom N450 has been re-architected similar to Intel's other notebook processors in that it now has an integrated memory controller and graphics core on the CPU itself. In addition, Intel's serial DMI (Direct Media Interface) now replaces the system bus to the Southbridge IO controller. From a performance standpoint, the Atom N450 single core chip offers a nice performance gain versus previous generation Atom CPUs and it appears Intel has dual-core variants of the chip on the horizon as well."

20 of 165 comments (clear)

  1. So... by fuzzyfuzzyfungus · · Score: 3, Funny

    Is the new integrated graphics core a descendant of intel's much maligned; but well supported in linux, GMA950 line, or is it another take on the HD-media-accelerating-but-dear-god-the-drivers-oh-why-does-it-hurt GMA500 stuff?

  2. Midnight Blue? by Yvan256 · · Score: 5, Funny

    (photo) Asus Eee PC 1005PE In Midnight Blue

    What Midnight Blue? Oh, you mean underneath all those stickers? Seriously, why do non-Apple laptops always look like Nascar, erm, cars?

    1. Re:Midnight Blue? by nine-times · · Score: 5, Insightful
      My guess is that it's a variety of factors:
      • Apple, having such a strong design culture, is the only manufacturer who realizes these stickers make your computer look cheap and stupid.
      • Apple's design culture is often about minimalism, and so they probably wouldn't put extra symbols or stickers on their computers even if it didn't look cheap and stupid.
      • Apple is just about the only laptop manufacturer who can't be bullied by Microsoft into putting any kind of "Microsoft certified" sticker on it.
      • Apple customers are less likely to be casual about their attachment to the brand. If you're a Dell customer, you might not think twice about buying an HP. If you're an Apple customer, buying an HP instead is a little more noteworthy. Therefore, they don't have to try to compete by advertising energy star compliance or the latest Intel chip. An awful lot of Apple customers couldn't care less about which Intel chip is in their computers.

      There are probably more, but that's off the top of my head.

    2. Re:Midnight Blue? by badboy_tw2002 · · Score: 3, Interesting

      I just bought one of the new HP Envy laptop and was presently surprised at the lack of stickers. Its just an HP logo on the back, similar to apple. In fact, the entire thing pretty much was just ripped off from Apple - keyboard design, body construction, multi-touch mousepad, you name it. Even the packaging was slick and minimalist, just like an apple. (Pricier than a PC, but way more bang for your buck than a similarly priced macbook pro). And no, not a window's certified sticker in sight - oh snap, maybe its not actually windows certified!!!!

    3. Re:Midnight Blue? by Sponge+Bath · · Score: 4, Informative

      Once you have removed the stickers, you are often left with difficult to remove adhesive gunk on the laptop. An easy way of removing the gunk without damaging or scratching the surface is to spray a little silicone based lubricant in the area and wipe with a paper towel. It quickly wipes off and the silicone lubricant won't damage plastic like petroleum based lubricants (like WD-40) sometimes do.

    4. Re:Midnight Blue? by Tetsujin · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Because unlike pretentious Apple fanboys, most people care more about a computer being cost effective and able to do what is needed. Its the reason why PCs and not Macs own most of the market.

      Why does cost-effective, capable hardware imply a need for a billion stickers on the casing?

      --
      Bow-ties are cool.
    5. Re:Midnight Blue? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Funny

      * PC customers are capable of removing the the stickers.

  3. Re:Still chokes on flash? by Yvan256 · · Score: 3, Informative

    If you think Flash sucks on Windows then obviously you've never seen it run on Mac OS X. Adobe is a complete disgrace on that OS.

  4. Re:Still chokes on flash? by drinkypoo · · Score: 3

    If you think Flash sucks on Windows then obviously you've never seen it run on Mac OS X. Adobe is a complete disgrace on that OS.

    That's okay, I can experience how much it blows on Linux. Using the 32 bit flash for Linux in a 32 bit firefox or in 64 bit firefox with a little help, on my Athlon 64 X2 4000+, was about like using it on my Acer Aspire D250 (1.6GHz Atom, old type.) Using the 64 bit flash on that machine was more like using it on a 1.4 GHz Thunderbird or something. Now I have a Phenom II 720 and I can just barely watch fullscreen flash video, and flash games perform worse than a Core Duo T2600 with Windows XP. Adobe hates Linux as much as they hate Mac OS.

    --
    "You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
  5. Re-Architecting English by dwm · · Score: 3, Funny

    The Atom N450 has been re-architected ...

    Wow -- I guess it was waaaaay too advanced to merely be "re-designed".

  6. Intel and Linux by Enderandrew · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Intel has been tearing apart their Linux graphics stack and rewritting it for the future. For a while, that meant poor performance during the rewrite, but it really is getting better. Intel is really helping push DRI2, GEM, TTM, UXA, etc.

    At least Intel does their development in the open. Didn't Intel also contribute code to Moblin to optimize Moblin performance on their hardware? I'd like to see some more general kernel enhancements for these processors. Any speed increase over Windows on the most common netbook processor is a huge win.

    Chrome OS is already fast. If Intel can help make it faster when comparing it side-by-side to 7, it only helps Linux adoption on the whole.

    I also have a small tangental question. I always hear about huge performance gains that can come from properly writing code to take advantage of SSE2,3,4,etc instruction sets. I also hear that almost no one does write code to take advantage of these instruction sets. If Intel really wants to push their hardware, why not write such optimizations for the Linux kernel?

    --
    http://blindscribblings.com - Tasty pop-culture in conceptual fashion.
    1. Re:Intel and Linux by Andy+Dodd · · Score: 3, Informative

      Your post completely missed the original poster's point - the Intel GMA500 is a major outlier in terms of Linux support.

      The GMA950 series is well supported by Linux (with the exception of the re-architecture issues that hurt Ubuntu 9.04 so badly).

      The GMA500 is simply minimally supported in Linux and all indications state that it will stay this way. The GMA500 graphics core was outsourced to another company, as was driver development.

      As to SSE2/3/4 - They only benefit for certain operation types. Most kernel ops won't benefit, and also, using SSE usually means hand-coding in assembler - compilers that generate good vector SIMD code are rare. The kernel developers tend to prefer to avoid hand-coded ASM whenever possible.

      However, I do recall that RAID checksumming code and memcpy() were once implemented using MMX to improve them, so these sections might benefit from SSE (and might already do so.)

      --
      retrorocket.o not found, launch anyway?
  7. Re:Still chokes on flash? by jo42 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Have you ever even considered that the problem isn't the hardware, but the [lousy, crappy pile of rancid sheep dip] software known as "Flash"?

  8. Re:Still chokes on flash? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    If you think Flash sucks on Mac OS X then obviously you've never seen it run in Linux. Adobe is a complete disgrace on that OS.

  9. Who actually needs this? by John+Betonschaar · · Score: 5, Insightful

    If you'd ask me: it's still a slow piece of crap that has no particular place in the market if it weren't for (consumer) Microsoft Windows being x86-only, and now it's even worse than the original Atom since you get a crappy Intel GPU for free.

    In the low-power segment: you are still better of with an ARM chip if you don't need Windows (it consumes less power), another x86 SoC if you absolutely need Windows but don't need anything else (which also consume less power) or a Via Nano if you are a consumer who likes Windows a lot but only do a little browsing and email (they are faster and comparable in terms of power consumption).

    In the HTPC/Media center segment: the Atom + Nvidia ION platform was great, low-power/low-performance CPU with a GPU that does all the video decoding and OpenGL. Now you get an Intel GPU that is *still* not able to do full video-pipeline accelerated GPU decoding. Better get yourself an old Atom, or hopefully in the future a Via Nano + decent GPU.

    In the Netbook segment: with the performance of the original Atom being nothing but abysmal unless you only use Notepad, you really want a Celeron ULV anyway. It's a much better design, in a whole different performance class than the Atom, and you don't get any of the stupid restrictions Intel puts on using the Atom.

    In the embedded segment: you don't need x86 compatibility at all, so ARM would be your 1st choice.

    Maybe I'm missing something, but I really don't see the point of a crippled and slow x86 CPU with a design based on 10-year old technology, which is forcibly coupled to an IGP that isn't able doing much more than rendering your desktop...

  10. Re:RTFA, please by nxtw · · Score: 3, Informative

    RTFA: "The graphics core is a basic DX9 instantiation that is a kin to Intel's GMA500 graphics core in the previous generation Intel 945G chipset"

    Makes no sense: the 945G and variants had a GMA 950.

  11. Re:Still chokes on flash? by Big+Boss · · Score: 3, Funny

    Doesn't Firefox need more than 4GB these days?? :D

  12. Did you bother reading the article? by Joce640k · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Look again at the bit where it says "battery life"....

    In the real world outside Slashdot not everybody is hung up on their 3dMark scores. In fact very few people are, judging by the fact that Intel GPUs outsell both NVIDIA and ATI combined.

    --
    No sig today...
  13. Re:meanwhile, where are the ARMs? by jabjoe · · Score: 3, Informative

    Fine:
    http://www.arm.com/markets/embedded_solutions/armpp/25333.html

    Doesn't take much looking.

  14. Re:Power use? by bhtooefr · · Score: 3, Informative

    Even the original Atoms used less power than the most power-efficient single-core AMD platform.

    Platform TDP for the Yukon platform (RS690E northbridge, SB600 southbridge) ranges from 19 watts with a 1 GHz Sempron, to 26 for a 1.6 GHz Athlon. (29 for a dual-core 1.6 GHz Turion.) The most efficient Athlon-based Yukon is 1.2 GHz, and platform power consumption is 24 watts.

    Platform TDP for the typical N270+945GSE+ICH7M is 11.8 watts, N450+NM10 is 7 watts. Granted, the Yukon stuff doesn't really compete with the Atom, it competes with Intel CULV.

    CULV has a 14.5 watt chipset (GS45, ICH9M) TDP, add 5.5 watts for single-core, 10 watts for dual-core CPUs.

    Oh, and I'll toss the VIA Nano in, it fits somewhere between the Atom and the CULV and Yukon platforms in performance.

    The fastest current Nanos for netbooks are the U2225 and U2250, both at 1.3 GHz (the U2250 is at "1.3+ GHz") and 8 W TDP. (IIRC, though, the Nano is significantly faster than Atom.) The matching VX800U chipset has a 3.5 W TDP, so 11.5 W total platform TDP - less than the old Atom platform.

    The upcoming U3200 is at 1.4 GHz (and even faster than the clockspeed implies, apparently,) possibly 5 W TDP, and 2.3 W for the VX855, so 7.3 W platform TDP.